The Postcard Swap group that I belong to is going from strength to strength. We started about a year ago and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the postcards I have been receiving and I hope the ones I’ve been creating have been enjoyed by the recipients. I’ve written previously about postcards and this particular postcard swap. (See below for links to those articles).

I have just recently completed making the next lot of postcards for the swap and I thought I might share them with you. I tend to make my postcards all at once. I find that my sewing room tends to get into a terrible state, as I feverishly search through my fabric stash for the “perfect” fabric. So it makes sense to make them all at once – also this is a chance to “cash in” on the flow of creative juices.

This particular postcard swap offers a “theme” for the month and it’s entirely up to the creator as to how she interprets the theme. You can take it literally, or if you’re clever you can use a “play on words” approach and really go crazy. My themes for this round were Autumn, Bubbles, Flowers Galore and Jigsaw. I’m afraid, I wasn’t very imaginative with those topics, and just created where I felt I could.

The first was Autumn. I couldn’t think past an autumn leaf. So on a mottled brown background, I drew my leaf, vliesofixed it to the background and then started free motion quilting. I chose a gold thread for the leaf. Here I followed the outline, then incorporated veins. The background needed something so I free motion quilting a pattern I found on Leah Day’s Free Motion Quilt project website

Next came Bubbles. This was a pretty tricky theme for me and I settled for some fabric that I found that looked like bubbles. I then free motion quilted around the printed bubbles using a variegated green/blue thread. I then used a dark blue thread and free motioned very small bubbles between the larger bubbles. I was very pleased with the result. Not very creative, but I was pleased with my free motion quilting.

The next one, Flowers Galore, I think was by far my best piece out of the four. I first put a background fabric down. Then using a thin layer of wadding, vliesofixed the blue/yellow background. Onto this I bonded some red, orange and yellow fabric and then cut tiny triangles. These I ironed onto the blue/yellow background and then using my free motion foot, and a variegated green thread, drew grass and stems. Once I’d done enough, I then cut some more triangle “flowers” to sit on top, to give a 3D effect. I then bonded this top piece to the larger background.

The final postcard, Jigsaw wasn’t very imaginative at all I’m afraid. I sourced from my stash a picture and then set about superimposing a jigsaw pattern over it using my light box. I then ran a black border around the jigsaw pieces and finished it off with a marker pen, to make the pieces stand out.